


Unit 304

by wanderlust96



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dark Will Graham, Enemies to Lovers, Food is People, Grumpy Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter is a Cannibal, Hannibal Lecter is a Little Shit, Hannibal is a medical student, Hannibal wants to kill Will, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Manipulation, New Orleans, Slow Burn, Touch-Starved, Unhealthy Relationships, Will Graham is So Done, Will Graham is a Mess, Young Hannibal Lecter, Young Will Graham, but only at first, will is a cop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:47:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28944657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlust96/pseuds/wanderlust96
Summary: “You’re a mechanic?” The man asked, eyes dancing briefly to Will’s oil-stained hands. “Perhaps I could ask for a business card. My engine has been a tad temperamental of late.”Will's only bit of peace is the time spent alone in his storage unit-turned-workshop....until Hannibal rents a unit on the same row.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 33
Kudos: 182





	1. Chapter 1

The quarter was a mess of overlapping street music and neon vibrance. Will had fought off the stirrings of a migraine at the station, with the help of aspirin and cheap coffee, but now it was hitting him in full force – pounding behind his eyes in time with the heavy bass spilling from the clubs flanking the thoroughfare. He slammed his foot on the break, wincing at the harsh jolt that shot through his neck, as throngs of people milled about the road as though the sidewalk didn’t exist; harrowed commuters, starving artists and revelling tourists alike. With gritted teeth, he afforded himself a brief moment of catharsis, in which he imagined ploughing through the crowd and leaving a stroke of red in his wake.

The day had started badly, as most of his days tended to, lurching from a nightmare to the urgent buzz of his alarm and the muffled dispute of the couple in the next apartment. He reached too hastily for his phone and knocked it to the floor instead, where it continued to drone as Will dropped his head back to his pillow and considered the damp patch on his ceiling. He had taken to affording himself five minutes in the morning to wallow, but now his wallowing was being disturbed by his mobile as well as what he could only assume was the lid of a saucepan clattering against the wall. When he did manage to force himself out of bed, the cheap polyblend of his uniform made him shudder and he had to adjust the collar of his shirt three times before he could bare to move on with his morning. He ate his cereal to the sound of the muffled wailing of a baby across the courtyard.

A tedious shift followed; hours of booking disruptive day-drinkers and filing complaints. There was very little satisfaction to be had in a job where each day was the same and his colleagues, with whom he had nothing in common, enjoyed pointing out his socially awkward tendencies and referred to him as _grim Graham_.

“Cheer up, Grim,” Bates, the fresh-faced deputy, had said the second Will walked through the door.

Will had deflated; even the new guy felt confident enough to poke fun. He wondered if Bates knew that the grimace he had contorted his lips into was actually his best impression of a smile. It left him numb, at least emotionally. He would have killed for his apathy to manifest as _physical_ detachment so that he could have a break from the feeling of his brain writhing around his skull like a squid in a jar. There was no chance of that happening back at his noisy, shoebox apartment though and so, like he did most evenings, Will left work and headed straight to the middle of nowhere.

As he finally escaped the nocturnal chaos of New Orleans in the midst of Mardi Gras, and nosed his volvo into the quieter residential streets that would eventually open out onto the highway, his fingertips ceased their tapping on the steering wheel and he felt his shoulders unfurl.

The concealed cabin on the bayou where Will had spent the final years of his youth, with its rusted tin roof and creaking porch, was more to his tastes than his current dwellings. His father had settled them there, half-balanced above the bog on rickety stilts and nestled among thick trees with weeping branches, when social services made it abundantly clear that his vagabond lifestyle could only be having a negative impact on his teenage son. Will hadn’t thought to venture far to join the police academy, finally able to be stuck in his ways – clinging to the familiarity he had been gifted just a little bit too late into his emotional development. Even so, the commute from the Bayou to the City wasn’t one that could be tackled twice on a daily basis, and so he had been forced to rent something closer to the station. He was orphaned shortly after, if that term could really be applied to a man of twenty-two years,and had soon realised that familiarity wasn’t half as comforting when the memories evoked were of a dead man. Suddenly, he was shackled to a place he couldn’t stand; no longer young enough to be of concern to the people who had advocated for a permanent homestead and certainly not old enough to know where to begin in finding himself a new one. Despite what coming-of-age movies had led him to believe, it was not a simple case of venturing to a new and exciting part of the country, landing an honest job and stumbling onto the property ladder. Rusted shacks with a tendency to flood didn’t go for much and so while Will had a nest egg, it was closer to that of a hummingbird’s than the emu-sized monstrosity he would need to start anew.

Herein lay the need for the middle of nowhere. Will’s hobbies required space, of which his apartment had none, and quiet, of which the entire city in which he resided was equally without. Even if he had managed to stack towers of boat motors along his walls and block the noise of his neighbours long enough to tie a lure or two, there was still the fact that Will Graham did not enjoy _people._ He understood them, but relationships required one to be understood in return and in twenty-two years Will had not found a single person who could make sense of him. People had tried, often with a reductionistic approach. He’d been labelled ‘psycho’ by his peers, ‘autistic’ by his teachers, ‘poorly mannered and recalcitrant’ by the principle of his school and ‘emotionally stunted’ by his case worker. Will supposed he was some amalgamation of the four, if one squinted and looked at him sideways. If there were a personality scattergram on which everyone had a spot, he’d be the little dot on its own in one corner, often mistaken for a spec of dust.

So Will found his solace in an unlikely space; a sprawling industrial zone roughly ten miles west along route 61.

 _Syd’s Storage_ consisted of thirty rows of yellowing garage-style units, accessible via an enormous grid of gravel roads. On Will’s first visit to the reception, which looked an awful lot like a temporary building pushing it’s luck, Will had noted that the racks of copper keys for rows one through six were empty, with only several keys missing from the ten rows after that. He promptly asked for access to a unit on row thirty, a full five-minute drive from the entrance. A year later, he had yet to see another soul anywhere near what he had come to think of as _his_ row and, other than the distant hum of the highway, everything was blissfully quiet.

Unit 302 – because odd numbers made him uncomfortable – was an emblem of escape for Will and, as he juddered to a stop outside of it for perhaps the hundredth time, he sighed heavily enough that one might think all of life’s problems resided in his lungs. He’d recently oiled the hinges of the roller door, and it ascended smoothly with just the quiet clunk of the mechanism within. The ceiling light, suspended by its own wire, clicked to life immediately, illuminating his tidy respite – a clean concrete floor, a steel shelving unit housing his tools, and a neat workbench and folding chair at the centre. With the cool evening air sneaking in through the open front, Will allowed himself to get lost in the intricacies of a vintage boat motor.

It must have been 9pm when the sound of tires and spitting gravel made his chest seize. He dropped the rotary cog he’d been attempting to fit and glared out into the intrusion of someone’s high beams. When the car stopped and the headlights flicked off, Will was left squinting, half-blind, into the night.

“Hello?” He called; voice rough from disuse.

For a long moment, nothing happened. The car was a sleek, black thing and the interior lights remained off so that the driver was an indecipherable silhouette – an unsettlingly _still_ silhouette which seemed content to stare motionlessly from the window with its head tilted just so.

“ _Hello_?” Will tried again, equal parts spooked and frustrated. He reached for the spanner on his workbench and the car door swung open.

“Sorry to have startled you,” the silhouette said, stepping from the vehicle and into the light spilling out of the storage unit. The voice had a deep, unique cadence – a guttural, but not unpleasant, accent.

The face it belonged to was equally unique; sharp and ungiving – more reminiscent of a Victorian death mask than the soft human flesh on which one would be cast.

Will blinked a couple of times before bending down to retrieve the cog. The man still seemed to be awaiting a response when he righted himself and so Will did his best to mask his irritation when he replied.

“Didn’t startle me. Just didn’t expect anyone to be here.”

“Hmm, so late,” the man agreed, still content to stand at the threshold of Will’s personal space.

“At all,” Will corrected, rather bluntly, “There are plenty of units up front, it’s less of a drive.”

He watched as the man’s lips tightened and silently cursed his fortitude. A lesser man would have snapped back at him, allowing Will to lead them into a gruff to and fro which would ultimately lead to the other finding another unit, far _far_ away.

“You’re a mechanic?” The man asked, eyes dancing briefly to Will’s oil-stained hands. “Perhaps I could ask for a business card. My engine has been a tad temperamental of late.”

Will considered the man’s car. It had practically purred its way onto the lot.

“I’m not a mechanic.”

“Shame,” the man replied, and stepped back into the shadows to lock his car.

Will returned to his motor as the other stalked a little way down the row and let himself into unit 304. This was a remarkably unpleasant turn of events. He could feel his headache returning already. It took three attempts to fit the cog, and by the time he had, the stranger was back in his car. Holding his breath, Will did his best to move his hands as if he were still busy with the hunk of metal in front of him while glaring out of his periphery. He expected the man to peel away, hopefully affronted, but he merely shifted into first and ambled slowly to his own unit. Hoping to catch a glimpse of what the man had come to store – with any luck it would be something seasonal and he wouldn’t have his space invaded again until next Christmas – Will peered round the edge of his little workshop. The car, a Bentley of all things, was reversing into the unit. In several seconds it was fully tucked away and Will heard several purposeful steps before the unit door hurtled down to the ground. He scowled at the disrupted gravel left behind.

It was a cold night, but not bitingly. Will had thrown a tan body warmer over his jumper and was comfortable enough. Stuffing an entire car into a unit, just to avoid the exposure of walking ten feet to and from the trunk was more than a little extreme; especially since the man in question had been dressed to the nines in a tailored coat and a truly ugly black ushanka. Perhaps he was Russian. It would explain the accent and the sculpted, Slavic features, though not the apparent aversion to the cold. Perhaps, the law enforcer inside him urged, he was doing something untoward and Will should go in guns blazing and ban him from ever returning to Syd’s Storage again. He huffed, scratched the back of his neck, and got back to work.

There were five blissfully quite minutes or so, where Will began to believe it might not be so terrible to have a neighbour. With both the car and its occupant out of sight, and only the familiar hum of distant traffic, things were no different than before. Then, just as Will reached to spin the newly-fitted propeller with a satisfied hum, a grating, metallic sound reared up two units down. It sounded like the electric file Will’s father had used during a short stint as a carpenter, but infinitely more annoying for that fact that it wasn’t his father, but the very unwelcome stranger. It groaned on for ten seconds then stopped and Will shuffled out into the open to glare at the closed unit. Another ten seconds or so of noise, and then silence. Will felt his hackles rise. Even with the barrier of 303 between them, the sound was loud enough to rattle around his skull. Exhaling sharply through his nostrils, emitting an angry puff of condensation, Will stormed back to his unit and pulled the door down harshly enough that it clanged, and the sound rattled out down the row, echoing from the faded fronts of the sealed units. The grinding sound stopped abruptly. Will held his breath. Ten beautiful seconds of silence followed. He thought he heard the man hum, but it was too muffled to be sure. A truck’s horn lowed far in the distance; all was right in the world.

And then the grinding started up again.

Will sank into his chair with his hands in his hair and groaned. Perhaps the stranger was attempting to fix his perfectly functioning engine himself, though why he would have to spend a night in a storage unit to achieve that was beyond Will. After a while, the long groans turned to short, sharp pulsating whirs that were ten times more obnoxious than the previous sound. Will span the propeller, as he had been planning to do, but it was impossible to tell if it whistled cleanly through the air as he had hoped or if it was loud and laboured since all he could hear was the damnable man in 304. He had started alternating between the two sounds, as if finding the formula for maximum irritation.

_Whir whir whir **griiinnnddddd**._

_Whir whir whir **griiinnnddddd.**_

It was late, about the time that Will would normally be getting home, but to do so now would feel too much like admitting defeat. Instead, despite his aching head and a vague sense of hunger, Will began fitting and the motor’s exterior.

_Whir whir whir **griiinnnddddd.**_

A tiny screw slipped from his fingers and rolled off into the obscurity of the dark, dimpled concrete floor. Will ground his teeth and laughed through them mirthlessly.

_Whir whir whir **griiinnnddddd.**_

His screwdriver slipped and jabbed the knuckle of his left thumb, taking a sizable chunk of skin with it.

_Whir whir whir **griiinnnddddd.**_

There was a pack of stale cigarettes somewhere; Will had quit cold turkey when lung cancer had seen fit to take his only family from him. Now, he scrambled through the orderly stack of tool and tack boxes until he found them, shoved one between his lips and flung the door open; stepping into the night with his hands cupped, protecting the flame from his zippo until the end glowed orange. He was half way through his second, and feeling mildly nauseous, when the sound stopped, the car emerged from the unit, and the stranger from the car.

Leaning against the edge of the entrance to his own unit, Will watched him with thinly veiled disdain.

The stranger offered him an affected smile and put his hands behind his back. There was a moment, when he rocked back on his heels and appeared to be appreciating the quiet, that Will itched to stride forward and punch him.

“That was loud,” he said, instead.

“I hope I didn’t disturb you,” the man replied, with a challenging twinkle in his eye.

Will took a long drag and blew the smoke out forcefully in his direction.

“Are you done?” He asked.

Instead of answering his question, the man tilted his head and considered him. It made the hairs at Will’s nape stand to attention. He gripped his cigarette a little tighter.

“Truly, I didn’t expect to see another soul this far from the entrance,” and his face held the aura of a smirk, even while his mouth remained perfectly straight, “though I must say you are terribly territorial over this stretch of gravel.”

Will pushed himself off of the wall, unsure why he felt the need to make himself appear larger though compelled to do it regardless.

“I like the quiet,” he said, dropping his cigarette – unfinished - to the ground and stomping it out under the ball of his foot.

Up close, the man appeared to be only a few years older than Will himself. Perhaps his youth was more obvious without the hideous hat. Strands of his hair had fallen into his face, giving him a ruffled sort of poise.

“And the privacy, I’d wager,” the other said, closing the distance between them.

“What can I say,” Will replied, with narrowed eyes and a one-sided shrug, “I’m a private kind of person.”

“And I,” the other purred, stopping inches from Will and offering his hand. “Hannibal Lecter,” he added, when Will’s ingrained southern manners compelled him to take the proffered hand. His skin had a powdered feel to it.

“What were you doing in there?” Will asked, unable to help himself.

When it was clear that Hannibal wouldn’t restore the distance between them, Will shuffled back a few steps until his back was pressed to the wall again.

“Sculpting,” Hannibal said, then; “You’re being terribly rude.”

Will guffawed.

“ _Excuse me_ ”?

“I gave you my name.”

Will huffed.

“I didn’t ask for it,” but then, because even Will could only be so impolite until he started to feel awkward, he added “Will Graham.”

Hannibal gave him a tight-lipped smile.

“You realise there are art studios in New Orleans?” Will grumbled.

“Yes, I’m aware but I like to keep my work to myself, at least until the grand reveal.”

“ _Sculpting_ ,” Will muttered, like it was a dirty word.

“Hmm,” Hannibal replied, slinking backwards to his unit to pull the door closed, “I would be more than happy to show you my work in the future. Maybe even involve you in the process.”

“I really don’t find sculpting that interesting,” Will said with a grimace.

 _Grim Graham._ He really couldn’t help himself.

Hannibal stooped to click the padlock into place and regarded Will over his shoulder.

“You might, with the right medium.”

Will didn’t like the steady way the other held his gaze. He darted his eyes up to the sky – there was very little light pollution this far out. The Great Cluster in Hercules was watching him back just as steadily.

“My medium is spark plugs and engine grease,” Will stated flatly.

“Ah, well if we’re referring to our work then my medium is the human body.” Hannibal replied, and then – before Will could reach for his spanner a second time – “I’m a medical student at Tulane University.”

Will swallowed audibly. His level of discomfort was inching steadily towards unbearable.

“I’m afraid I should be off, Will.” Hannibal said as he unlocked his car and slipped into the front seat.

Good riddance, Will thought, as the driver’s door closed.

The Bentley, which no student had any business driving, turned and as it inched past Will’s unit the window rolled down to reveal Hannibal’s mocking smile.

“I’ll see you again very soon, Will.”

The car made a smooth exit, front lights slicing through the night before turning the corner and dissolving into darkness. Will watched it go with a pit in his stomach. Just like that, his slice of self-imposed solitude had been stolen. _How much time could a medical student really have to sculpt for pleasure, though?_ Will reassured himself as he began tidying the disorder he had created in his wild search for a burst of nicotine. He still felt a little queasy from that second cigarette and imagined that if he were to look in a mirror he’d have taken on a pallid, yellow hue. He blamed Hannibal Lecter.

It was nearing ten, and the lot was deserted, by the time Will’s beaten up Volvo followed the Bentley’s tracks through the gravel and out onto the highway. The drive back into the city was never as relaxing as the drive out, and this time that was particularly true. The whirring and grinding, and the unwelcome headlights and spitting gravel, seemed to follow Will home - playing on repeat in the back of his mind. When he arrived back at the apartment block, it was to the sound of muffled crying. He wondered if it had been going on like that all day and if, as a man of the law, he should act on it. He was still wondering as his feet carried him over the threshold to his own building and had all but forgotten about it when he reached the door to his apartment. Cereal again for dinner, then a lukewarm shower before bed. He stared up at the damp patch until its black edges crept out and engulfed him, and he dreamt of nothing but babies in ushankas, carving death masks from granite in the low light of Syd’s Storage.


	2. Chapter 2

“…and Graham, patrol the French Quarter.”

Having spent the last fifteen minutes staring over the Chief’s shoulder, watching a crow entangled in a dispute with a takeout bag through the tilted slats of the louvered window, it took a moment for Will to return to the briefing and nod his assent. It hardly mattered, for by the time his eyes had refocussed and the words had been processed, the majority of the officers around him had filed off to their respective roles or made a beeline for the worn out coffee machine in the corner. The Chief himself had moseyed over to the new receptionist, a young thing in a modest blouse - wide eyed and eager to please. Will reached up to obscure his view of the impending complaint of misconduct with the frames of his glasses but was jostled by a few stragglers so that he ended up jabbing the bridge of his nose instead.

“Sorry, Grim,” one of them called over their shoulder.

Will ducked his head and made for the exit, mourning the loss of free coffee. There was no way that he’d brave the swarm of boys in blue that had descended upon it this early in the morning and it looked like he’d be outdoors for the majority of the day. This in and of itself was preferable to being stuck inside of the station - with the clanging of file cabinets, whirring of budget desk fans and the continuous trill of the telephone – but did mean that he’d have to find a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop and dip into his own pocket to fund his caffeine requirements. As he stepped from the dim light and dust motes out onto the street, Will felt his shoulders hunch. _You should wear the badge with pride_ , he’d been told during his training, _stop scuttling around like a miscreant_. They’d soon given up and assumed that poor posture was one of the inherent qualities that made Will Graham poorly suited, yet not unqualified, for the job. 

His weekend had been steeped in misery, leaving Will to wonder why he seemed to be the only person in The Big Easy that found everything so hugely difficult. In the space of two days there were three consecutive street parties. Surely it was only fair that the revellers that had caused his sleep deprivation had the decency to be hungover on a terribly bright Monday morning, yet here they were indolently clogging the sidewalk. In the past it wouldn’t have been so insufferable, in that Will wouldn’t have stuck around to suffer it. Now though, the threat of a pretentious medical student’s presence kept him from his workshop. _Hannibal Lecter,_ he silently cursed the name with his grimmest of grimaces. He’d considered returning to the storage facility about three hours into that first street party, but he was already wound so tightly that he could only imagine the torrent of abuse he would have ended up throwing the other’s way. He’d had to admit to himself that, really, Hannibal had done nothing wrong. That didn’t take the sting out of having his refuge invaded though.

There was a brief moment where Will pictured Hannibal driving a host of armoured elephants towards his storage unit; the man himself sat astride broad, leathery shoulders and having the audacity to look unruffled. He could hardly blame him; conquering was in his name.

As luck would have it, Will found a coffee shop toting reasonably priced flat whites on a scruffy a-board just outside its door. As he approached, he caught sight of his scowl in the shop window and had to admit that there was some credence to the nickname he’d been lumped with. It took an alarming amount of effort to smooth it out into something more neutral and by that point several people had shoved past him and formed a queue. The coffee, when he finally got his hands on it, was not much better than the instant mulch at the station. It warmed his hands though, and steamed his glasses past the point of having to make eye contact with those passing by.

As Will patrolled, his mind wandered, and he was incredibly displeased to find that Hannibal was occupying an alarming number of his thoughts. Hannibal striding obnoxiously into Will’s space. Hannibal’s angular face titled up at the sky, posture wide and imposing. Hannibal’s Bentley spitting gravel against Will’s unit. Hannibal. Hannibal. Hannibal. He was almost thankful to find a well-versed drunk stumbling out of a bar and promptly freeing himself to urinate against the wall. _Long night_ , Will thought - practically sympathised – and waited for him to finish up before taking his details. Will wasn’t sure what he had expected from police work, but this wasn’t it. When he’d first considered it, at perhaps five or six years old, he’d been immersed in the adventures of Kojak – sprawled on his stomach on a musty motel bed, eyes glues to the fuzzy little screen on top of the dresser. Like many children, he’d been drawn in by flashy Alfa Romeo, shattering sugar-glass windows, tinny gunshots and suspense. Frail and friendless, it wasn’t a stretch to assume that a position of power also held some appeal. His peculiar penchant for reading people wasn’t apparent to him at such a young age, even if the other children did seem to shy away from him as if they could sense something was wrong. That came later, along with the first unfortunate pains of puberty. It was the kind of curse that Will thought he could make the most of on the police force; quickly gathering someone’s motive, making connections in a mess of evidence. Right now, it did little to help. In fact, Will would have turned it off if he had the slightest idea how.

This particular perpetrator of disorderly conduct had staggered from a bar at past eight in the morning, with the previous day’s five o’clock shadow spattered in cheap beer and vomit. He was bloated, with the yellow pallor expected of drunks and the malnourished. Poor, probably. Almost definitely recently divorced – if the pale band of skin on his ring finger was anything to go by. Which, of course, it was. Will knew how to disregard the things that didn’t matter. The pinprick in the crook of his arm for instance was not evidence of a drug addiction as much as it hinted at the man finding himself paralytic on so many occasions that the emergency room might as well have kept the canula in him for easy access. He was lumbering man, world-weary and unattractive with sagging, sad eyes. Will felt instantly sorry for him and let him off with a warning. He’d drink himself to death in a matter of years regardless. Perhaps it was this reminder of the brevity of life that made Will resolve to visit his unit. What were the chances Hannibal would be there again?

As it happened, the chances were high. After dashing back to his apartment to change and making it to the unit in record time, Will was jaded to find that Hannibal had already arrived. He had not seen fit to squeeze his entire car alongside him again, for the sleek, black Bentley was parked just outside of the closed garage-style door. The unbearable noise, however, was exactly the same as it had been on the previous occasion – as tooth-rattling as a dental bur. Pressing a finger and thumb to his temples, where pressure was already beginning to build, Will let himself into his workshop. He flicked the light switch and then turned to close the door behind him as the bulb buzzed above him for half a second before coming to life with a click. It left him blinking against the brightness with eyes accustomed to dark roads and distant streetlamps from the drive to the storage lot. Muttering beneath his breath, he crossed his little space to the aged but sturdy wooden chair in the corner and slumped down into it. The grinding and whirring continued on as he searched his coat pockets for his aspirin. After swallowing two pills dry, Will let his head fall back against the brick wall and groaned. He considered returning home, but the couple next door had been fighting again when he left.

Somewhere, among the neat but substantial stack of salvaged motors, generators and boat propellers was an old radio, reminiscent of the boombox his neighbour had had when he was a teenager. Will had found it under a soggy, handwritten sign toting free ‘furniture’, though the radio was accompanied only by a stool with one leg missing and a drenched beanbag spilling it’s filling out onto the street. He’d dried it in rice and had been pleasantly surprised to find that the only permanent damage was a crack to the circuit board. He’d always envied his neighbour, who’d had a small but respectable collection of nice things. The radio beckoned the dirt-poor teen in him, though he could have afforded something better if he’d truly wanted a radio in the first place. Still, it could be a blessing now if he got it working and so he abandoned the vintage boat motor – hefting it apologetically aside – and set to work with his soldering iron.

There was a point, between dismantling the radio and unspooling the long coil of solder, that Will fished a beer from the redundant ice box he kept on the shelves anchored to the back wall. It was lukewarm but succeeded in chasing away the taste that the pill’s powdered coating had left on his tongue. The circuit board’s components and silver dots looked up at Will like a birds-eye view of a City and he briefly forgot that his life was perpetually disappointing. The sound of Hannibal’s sculpting faded into distant white noise and Will chased down the first beer with a second. It probably shouldn’t have surprised him so much when his hand slipped and the soldering iron branded a stripe across his knuckles. The double dose of pills and alcohol did nothing to dull the pain and he cussed, dropping the iron and solder to the floor – though not before decorating his hand in silver dots like poorly applied, _molten hot_ henna.

He stumbled a little on his way out of the unit, cradling his hand to his chest, and even overcome with white hot pain the voice in his head did not refrain from pointing out the similarities between Will and the public urinator he had encountered earlier that morning. It took three attempts to fit the keys into his car door and retrieve the half bottle of stale water from the glove compartment. Only after upending it over his hand in a flurry of frantic breathing, did Will lift his head and realise that Hannibal was stood across from him. Clearly having intended to step into his car, he had paused with the door open and was regarding Will with a tilted head and the hint of dark amusement in the narrowing of his eyes. Trying, and failing, to maintain eye contact, Will did his best to put on a brave face but felt his lower lip tremble despite himself. He twisted the expression into a frown, but it had already been caught. Hannibal’s head tilted a little further to the side and the tip of his tongue darted lightning fast between his lips. Will thought of the forked tongues of snakes testing the air for prey and took a step to the side so that his car stood more directly between them.

The vehicular barrier did little to deflect the medical student however, as he bent elegantly to slide something out from under his passenger seat and began crossing the distance between them. It was only when he rounded Will’s car bonnet that it became clear he was holding a first aid kit.

“May I?” He asked, a little eagerly, with an outstretched hand.

Will placed his hand in Hannibal’s, a little _less_ eagerly. In fact, he held it stubbornly to his chest and, for a moment, considered telling him where to stick it. He snorted at the thought and felt Hannibal considering his face for a moment before returning his attention to his hand. Hannibal’s were soft and freshly clean. Will could detect the stinging scent of surgical spirit – the type used in abundance in hand sanitiser and anti-septic wipes. He could hardly have known that Will would injure himself, and so they weren’t pristine - practically sparkling beneath the glow from the unit - for _Will’s_ benefit. As his blistered hand was turned this way and that, Will wondered if all medical students were pinnacles of cleanliness or if Hannibal were the exception; adverse to the film of clay dust his sculpting no doubt caused – to the point of eradicating all evidence that it had ever been there. Will himself often left the lot up to his elbows in engine grease, or with his shirt smeared in fuel or WD-40.

“You appear to be burnt, Will.” Hannibal stated, as if that much weren’t obvious. He looked as though he wanted to say something more but pinched his lips shut, though the narrowing of his eyes gave him away again.

“And you find that amusing?” Will asked, bitterness seeping into his words. It was difficult to be polite, even to the man tending to your wounds, when said wounds were still felt as if they were blistering above an open flame.

Apparently surprised to have be called out on it, Hannibal blinked his face back to neutrality and dropped Will’s hand in favour of placing the first aid kit on the hood of the car and searching through the contents. It was well stocked, Will arched his neck to see a little clearer despite himself; plasters, antiseptic spray, disposable gloves – everything you’d expect of a boy scout or soccer mom – but also curved needles and surgical thread and…

“Is that a scalpel?” Will asked, dubiously.

Plucking a conular tube of burn gel and some dressings from his supplies, Hannibal replied; “One can never be too prepared,” and inclined his head to Will’s new disfigurement as if to say, _see_?

“What does _one_ even use a scalpel for?” Will asked, aware that he was being deliberately obtuse but unable to blame anyone other than the man in front of him for his current predicament.

“A great deal more than you might think,” he replied, applying the gel in one swift, practiced motion and then setting to work with the dressings.

“Thanks,” Will mumbled, shoulders sagging a little as the throbbing heat across his knuckles calmed some. 

“And thank you for the practice,” Hannibal quipped, drawing a begrudging laugh in response.

He held Will’s hand for a little longer than was comfortable once he was done and Will shuffled awkwardly form foot to foot to fight to urge to yank it away.

“You smell of beer,” Hannibal observed aloud.

Will furrowed his brow, the urge to pull his hand back growing in intensity, and wondered if he had meant to be so blunt or if it was due to the language barrier. He quickly dismissed that thought. Really, Hannibal seemed to speak better English than he did.

“A cautionary tale,” Will muttered, flexing his hand until Hannibal dropped it.

“And possibly another,” Hannibal said, giving Will’s hand a final cursory once over before pivoting cleanly on his heel to pack away his supplies. “If you plan on driving, that is.”

Will watched him rewrap the remaining gauze tightly and then shift the contents of the kit around so that the burn cream could sit precisely parallel to a tube of Savlon. He spared a glance into his own car, clean but certainly not tidy; jump leads loosely spooled and overflowing from the car door compartment, a pair of hiking boots in the passenger footwell, and a spread of second-hand CDs sharing the backseat with an empty jerry can. Seemingly unperturbed by Will’s lack of response, Hannibal finished tidying up at a leisurely pace. When he turned back though, his eyes had taken on an intensity that made Will’s stomach lurch. Day to day, Will did his best to avoid eye contact; be it through the use of heavy-framed glasses or a general refusal to look up from the ground. With Hannibal though, Will found himself drawn to meet his eyes – wrenched towards them like two blackholes.

“I’d be more than happy to drive you home. Consider it an extension of my duty of care,” Hannibal said pleasantly.

Too pleasantly. His tone did not match the sharp edges of his expression. It struck Will quite how absurd it was for a stranger – bordering on nemesis if Will were asked – to offer to go so out of his way.

“Yeah, uh, no-“ He replied, with a barked laugh. “Thank you,” he quickly added, lifting his bandaged appendage up between them, “-for the hand. But I’ll just wait it out here until I’m safe to drive.”

When Hannibal merely inclined his head and bid him a good night, walking placidly back to his car, Will humoured the idea that he himself may have been acting more than a little paranoid. Still, it was the appropriate thing to do – to turn the offer down; the kind of offer made with fingers crossed behind ones back while silently chanting ‘ _please don’t take me up on it’_. Will himself had long ago stopped offering gestures of kindness in order to avoid that dreaded few seconds in which the person in question might decide to accept. People could be draining and while Will could play a part and hit all the right social cues with enough effort, he’d rather not have to. He was drawn from his thoughts when Hannibal spoke up from beside his car, voice carrying across the distance between them seemingly without him having to raise it at all.

“Perhaps attempt to resist the lure of anymore sacrificial fires, Scævola,” he called, the taunt evident in his voice.

Hannibal was not the first, and likely wouldn’t be the last, to make assumptions regarding Will’s intelligence or level of education. Poverty was writ in his posture, in the incongruent muddle of accents that hinted at a transient life.

“How cheap the body is to men who have their eye on great glory,” Will muttered, the words tumbling out like a challenge before he could stop himself.

It wasn’t the sort of thing Will would normally have said. No one had spoken to him in quite such a pretentious way before – with pretty words and perfect fluidity. Growing up Will had emulated his father’s gruff, stunted way of talking and had assumed that was _his_ way of talking too, before finding himself copying his social worker’s soft, lilting pleasantries just as successfully. His response wasn’t _all_ mimicry. Will was well read; as a child he had hungered for the written word regardless of the content. It was the safe and one-sided communication that he had thought he longed for; nothing expected from him in return and therefore no pauses to be filled with insults or uncomfortable glances. When the most local library became nothing but a husk to him, and the dog-eared, defaced texts at school had all been devoured, Will saved up enough for bus fare into the city and pilfered the more eclectic selections he found there. As a result, he was perpetually brimming with thoughts and opinions, some of them contradictory and most of them loud enough to keep him up at night; an avalanche of ideas pummelling the weary, white walls of his skull.

And so, the thoughts were his own, but the composition more often belonged to someone else. Much like how notes existed long before someone parsed them into crotchets and quavers and scattered them across a page.

Hannibal’s brow rose a fraction and then settled just as quickly. Will huffed quietly, swelling with bitter satisfaction at having proved him wrong.

“You resemble him,” Hannibal said, tilting his head as if genuinely considering the likeness. “At least, the version of Scævola displayed at the Louvre. It’s the curls, I think. Perhaps the sternness.”

Just as quickly as he had gained the upper hand, Will found himself floundering. He raised a hand to the back of his neck and grimaced as Hannibal tracked the movement. The uncomfortable twist in his stomach suggested he wanted nothing more than for Hannibal to leave, but he found himself speaking up instead of letting him go. His voice cracked as he spoke.

“I feel less brave, Roman youth and more knuckle-rapped child.”

For all of Will’s discomfort, Hannibal appeared momentarily amused. His lips twitched into a half smile.

“What was it he said?” Hannibal asked, though Will was not surprised when he immediately answered his own question. “When adversity strikes, we suffer bravely. Do you suffer bravely, Will?”

It felt an awful lot like standing his ground, this strange, distanced conversation. An awful lot like a pissing competition. _This storage lot’s not big enough for the both of us_ , Will imagined himself saying. Perhaps he was more affected by the beer than he’d first thought. Still, one didn’t have to be sober to acknowledge the threat lacing Hannibal’s words. Scævola’s words, really, though the composition was _entirely_ his own. Swallowing the dry lump in his throat, Will considered his life. Friendless, without family. Hollow on a good day, wracked with intangible agony if it were bad. _Do I look brave?_ He wanted to ask. _Because I’m suffering._

Hannibal didn’t give him time to do so, thankfully; sliding into his car, leaving will to think on it. When the Bentley purred to life and pulled slowly away, Will raised his bandaged hand in parting and hoped that this bizarre incident of territorial passive-aggression wouldn’t mean that he and Hannibal would forever more be required to make small talk when they bumped into one another.

**Author's Note:**

> Take a shot every time Hannibal implies that he's a serial killer.


End file.
